Some Cuttings

There's WHAT coming down???

Here's what we woke up to today:

Kip and I were NOT IMPRESSED! Yesterday the only snow left was under the trees and now look at it!

Mind you, now it is mid-afternoon and the stuff coming down is more rain than snow. But I'm staying holed up in my cosy office with a nice cup of hot coffee nearby.


Amaryllis

I was a bit worried that not many of my Amaryllis were going to bloom this year, but over the winter practically all of them have. I'm guessing that the bulbs you buy have all been grown to bloom at a specific time, but then when you grow them on, over time they drift to their own schedules. Many of them also put up a big crop of leaves before they bloom, unlike the ones you get from the stores.

So if all you get at first is leaves, don't give up. They may bloom yet!


Clivias

One more of my seedling Clivias has bloomed. It didn't have the wonderful soft fragrance of the other yellow one, but the flowers are a better shape and the colour is much more yellow. A beauty!

Fletcher Fern Garden

Stopped by the Fletcher the other day to check out the Fern Garden. The Garden itself was still covered with a layer of ice, but I was sorry to see bad news when I looked up at the Ash trees. I think they are pretty much all dead. Almost every one of them had large areas of bark picked off by woodpeckers, a sure sign of Emerald Ash Borer infestation. The Garden is in a area known as the Ash Woodlot, so this is a very sad thing. There are Maples in the understory, some of them 20' or more high, but it will be some time before they form a good new canopy.

I'm not sure what effect the lack of the overhead cover will have on the ferns. Obviously there will be less shade, but what worries me almost as much is that the lack of the larger trees will mean much less wind and weather protection. It is already a windy hilltop, now it might just be too dry and windy for them.

Not to mention that removing the trees will be a huge disruption and very damaging to the wildflowers.

OK. Head shake. We can plant new ones.



Snowdrops

Yesterday, before that nasty white stuff re-appeared, I had Snowdrops in bloom. I was surprised to see them - it has been very cold and there are still piles of icy snow under the trees, but there they were. Clusters of tiny white 'propellers' hanging gracefully over their emerging leaves.

Not a very good picture, I'm afraid. It was cold and getting dark. Typical snowdrop weather!

Snowdrops always remind me a garden in Manotick that I saw years ago. It belonged to very sweet person who had never cultivated them but had left them alone to take over her yard. There were thousands of flowers every spring. To the best of my knowledge they were all the same, but at the time I didn't know enough about them to check. I was a new gardener, and actually thought that, well, snowdrops were snowdrops.

Snowdrops are a major cult plant in the UK. Do a Google search and you'll see!